LEGER: Too many groups, Canadians spout lazy Maritimer myth

When Kevin Lacey, the Atlantic Canada director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, says that overuse of employment insurance underlies complaints about the use of foreign temporary workers, writes Dan Leger, he is oversimplifying a complex situation. Lacey is shown here in Halifax in 2010. (TIM KROCHAK / Staff)

To hear some people talk, you would swear the whole fuss over temporary foreign workers isn’t about mismatches in the work force, demographic change or the westward shift of economic opportunities. It’s all about Maritimers being too lazy to work, and that’s wrong.

It is not true that employment insurance and other supports are so lavish that they keep Maritimers at home, goofing off while the rest of Canada slaves away at honest work. But that’s the insidious message out there.

The head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business was on Prince Edward Island last week to campaign against changes to the temporary foreign worker program and in favour of more stringent reforms of EI.

Dan Kelly told the Summerside Journal-Pioneer that there’s an element in society “that will do just about anything not to work.” Kelly fairly noted that that element exists in every province, but the point was made.

Kelly’s small-business members in Atlantic Canada were surveyed and 20 per cent reported they had been asked by an employee to be laid off so they could collect EI.

“We shouldn’t have systems set up so that employers are pressured to lay off staff even though there’s work there, so that the person can collect employment insurance,” Kelly said.

Of course we shouldn’t. But two out of 10 is hardly a trend. And even Alberta, rest assured, has its slackers. When governments hand out cash to individuals, businesses or industries, someone will be there to take the money and run.

The problem we face in the Maritimes is that this is the image being promulgated across the country of us collectively, as if it were a fact. It isn’t: people here work hard, too.

To be fair, Kelly is campaigning against the federal government’s rather slapdash and decidedly political approach to fixing problems with temporary foreign workers. Thousands of small businesses use these workers to fill gaps. The federation wants the system reformed and temporary workers put on the road to permanent residency.

But also last week, Kevin Lacey, Atlantic spokesman for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, opined in the National Post that the real problem with temporary foreign workers isn’t foreign at all, it’s with EI here at home.

“Let’s clarify straight away what the debate surrounding the Temporary Foreign Worker Program is really about. This isn’t about Canada not having enough workers . . . It is about Employment Insurance paying too many people not to work.”

That’s nice and simple. Crack down on EI and presto! The problems go away.

But it’s not that simple and it never is. First, most of the temporary foreign workers are in British Columbia and Alberta, not Atlantic Canada. Is EI the issue in those provinces? And EI isn’t the only policy having an impact on labour markets.

We properly encourage education as the road to a better life. But educated people don’t want to work in fish plants or fast-food restaurants.

For 40 years and more, the dominance of manufacturing in central Canada, then oil in the West, has stimulated mass outmigration of skilled workers from Atlantic Canada. In many rural communities, there aren’t enough working-age people around any more to fill the available jobs.

The Atlantic Provinces Economic Council reports that even in high-unemployment areas, employers face “considerable challenges in recruiting new workers as outmigration has stripped many rural areas of their prime working age population.”

Conveniently, the supply of workers from internal migration helps keep a lid on labour costs in the oil patch, benefitting an industry that has many reasons to be grateful to the Harper Conservatives.

For Canadians, free movement of labour is a basic economic right. But there also should be mechanisms in place to ensure that one part of the country isn’t hollowed out to benefit another.

Fix the problem of temporary foreign workers. But don’t do it by creating another mess down East.